NES box art for Major League Baseball, the cover of NEStalgia episode 100

100 · MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

▶ Game info

VerdictSkip it

GenreSports

ReleasedApril 1988

SeasonSeason 4

DeveloperAtlus

PublisherLJN

January 3, 2020 · 1 hr 5 min · transcript available

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You choose your starting line-ups. You make managerial decisions. You pitch, catch, hit. This is Real baseball…for Real baseball fans!

Our verdict: Skip it

Atlus made this for LJN in 1988, and it is the first licensed sports game we have played. It has 26 teams in their real uniform colors, and the back of the box sells you on being the manager. We were impressed by how much it includes and let down by how little of it matters.

What works

Manager stuff. You build your lineup, the stats are close to the previous year's real numbers, and you can pinch hit, bring in a closer, or sub position players, even though that last one changes nothing.
Pitching. It was called the best part, since you control the ball through the whole pitch. Choose up, down or neither before the throw, then hold left or right to steer it inside or outside.
Small touches. Hold B instead of A to tag a runner. Umpires teleport to the scene of an out, then change how many hands they hold up depending on the call.

What doesn't

Batting is too easy. Scores get out of control for both teams, and one game had about 50 hits. You can swing again after a miss, because a strike only counts once the pitch reaches the catcher. The stats barely matter: a .270 hitter and a .320 hitter felt the same.
Fielding is fidgety. On an outfield pop fly you can't see your fielder until he shows up "40 miles west" of where he should be. Infield throws crawl while the computer's outfielders throw on fire.
The computer runs scared. Its runners stay put at first when you throw to second, and our attempts to steal and pick off never worked.
Controls and menus. The directional button is the base the runner is on, not where he is going. One wrong button in team selection dumps you to the main menu with an angry beep.
Sound. The stadium is blinking lights with one guy whistling over and over, and the manual brags about a crowd roar that is "literally just static."

Worth knowing

The box score has a spot for errors and the manual says they happen, but we never saw one. There is also an MLB challenge: exhaust all of the computer's pitchers and it gets stuck in a loop of error sounds until you shut the game off.

The bottom line

Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. Asked if we would have been mad about it in 1988, Sean said he would have been impressed by the stats and the pinch-hitting minutiae, and called it a step in the right direction. Joe said it was good enough for 1988. We commend the effort, but it didn't follow through enough.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

You choose your starting lineups. You make managerial decisions. You pitch, catch, hit, and because this is the only officially licensed Major League Baseball video game cartridge, this is real baseball for real baseball fans.

And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. And I'm Sean. And this is the 100th episode of Nostalgia. 100 years of Nostalgia. Do you have a word for that? Kazoo noise? Kazoo noise. Oh, okay. It's like kazoo tight.

Yeah, guys, how are we feeling? Kazoo noise. I feel great. Kazoo noise. Happy 100. 100 years older. Kazoo noise. So I did some math here, okay? And I took everything that we've said about the essential games, the games that are worth your time, and just the bad shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kazoo noise. Out of the 100 games that we've played so far, keep in mind that I don't have the verdict for Major League Baseball. But we have 12 essential games. We have 18 games that are worth your time on top of those. They're not quite essential.

And then we have 69... Nice. ...bad games, okay? Given the rough estimation of like 750 NES games total, that means that just extrapolating some information here, we're looking at about 84 essential games, 126 games worth your time, and 483 bad games. I honestly don't think it's going to project linearly. I think it's going to be more and more bad games. 483 sounds low for bad games. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, even though that's like alarmingly high compared to 69.

Nice. I think we have a... I think right now, we're only just starting to hit like peak Nintendo, like prowess. Yeah. Like, 1988, the NES is considered like the must-get toy of the year for Christmas, so it's only now becoming like a cultural phenomenon. I think that has to do largely in part to like, you know, just not... It wasn't in the zeitgeist yet. Yeah, it's already been established. We had like our Super Soft New York City launch in 1985.

In 86, it comes everywhere, but only with Nintendo games. Mm-hmm. And then finally, in like 87, it's like, we're starting to see a lot of arcade developers now bring over their games to the NES. Yeah. What we have never seen, but are now seeing a lot in 88, is franchises, movie titles. We have an officially licensed MLB game now. Like, this is the first sports licensed game that we have. Is this like anywhere, or is it just on NES that is the first license? Just on NES. I think already at this time, Major League Baseball at least made a version for Intellivision that sold like really well. Interesting. But that is obviously like... Yeah. ...much different than playing in NES.

That's zigzags and lines to describe characters and stuff. But if we want to just go a little bit more into some stats on the 100th episode here, out of our essential games, four of them are adventure games. And that's actually like the highest thing we have. Otherwise, it's very nicely spread between Run and Gun, Zapper, Arcade, Sports, and Shmup. We have a sports title? We do have a sports title. It is... Why can't I think of this off the top of my head?

You got the stats, Mike. We used to have Swallow. Well, it doesn't have it like that. It don't have it like that. You know, I'll get back to you on that. Totally. I'll get back to you on that. It's fine. Yeah, don't worry about it. It's fine. Everything's cool. I think we've had a pretty good variety. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Goodness that you didn't worry about the Zapper game though, and that you remembered what that one was. Do you know what the Run and Gun game is? Yeah, totally. Yeah. I don't need to tell you because you know I know. Right. That one was Contra. So at least you know that one. These are good.

I don't want to go into too many more details. I have my own statistic. Yeah. It turns out that with the amount of time that we've been doing this podcast and the amount of games that we've reviewed, we will continue to average like one game a week going forward if we continue this pace. That's interesting. That's a bold prediction though, because I think that that's going to completely be turned on its head. Whoa. You think so? Mm-hmm. That's some big news. Yeah. I'm announcing it here, everybody.

Thank you for stalling, Sean, but I was able to get the answer. Mike Tyson's punch-out. Oh, yeah, of course. Which of course we consider like a rhythm game. Yeah. But sports games are also where this system is dominating right now. We have a total of 20 sports games that we've played so far, now 21 with Major League Bigs ball. And out of those, 17 got skippets. Two are plays, and one is essential. Yeah. Of course, the other play is slalom, but what's the, oh, Excitebike would be the second play.

Yeah. A very divisive thing is arcade games where 13 are skips, but six are plays, and one is essential. What's essential? Uh, for, uh, for arcade? Yeah. Um, isn't it Balloon Fight? Balloon Fight. Okay, that's right. I would just say that the, at least I have something of a, uh, bias against arcade games on a, on a console, but obviously that really, there wasn't really a dichotomy at this point.

Totally. Yeah. I think nowadays when you get like, you know, for me, arcade games can still show off because in last week's episode I did put Pac-Man Championship Edition DX as like one of my top five. Fucking weirdo. Puyo Puyo Tetris too, you're a big fan. Yeah, yeah. Didn't make the cut. Puyo Puyo Tetris is good. Um, so that, that's that in terms of just genres and stuff, but I also wanted to talk about, uh, NES publishers because Nintendo R&D One has so far made 24 games.

Uh, for the NES and of those 14 of them have been deemed skip-its. So Nintendo, not as hot as we might think. Granted, four of those games are essential and, uh, six of them are play-its, but 14 skip-its is also like not a number to shy on. Mike, if we think about it as batting average, that would be well above, uh, the Mendoza line, wouldn't you say? Doesn't seem relevant. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it seems very relevant and I agree.

Um, I, I don't, yeah, I don't want to say like Nintendo makes bad games. They're, they're making great games here. I think it's just funny that like. Hot takes here. Right. When we, when we get games from Data East, uh, Tose, Atlas, uh, those are three developers that have made now over five games for the system and all of them have been considered shit by us. Yeah. We didn't even give a single one of them a consideration. Data East, whenever I hear that name, I know what I'm getting into. Yeah. Totally pop flies.

Yeah. He's doing a good job over here. I really like this. Can you keep this when we actually start talking about baseball? I will try. Okay. That's great. And of course we have to give a shout out here to, uh, Konami who, uh, out of nine games has either been complete dog shit or has been only essential. They don't have a single play in here. Wow. Five skips, four essentials. Can't wait to see what they come out with next to see if they balance the force here. Kind of like Shaq at the free throw line. You know what I'm saying? Um, yeah, no, it's yeah. All right. Anyway. It's more like, um, you know, batting cleanup. Yeah. The cleanup guy. There you go. Um, also Shaq at the free throw line. He was terrible. That's funny.

Uh, and last but not least to wrap up this hundred episode thing, other than the fun game we're going to play in the post show. So definitely stick around. And what's that? You never heard about our post show before? Go back to every episode. Does anybody listen past the end theme song? Maybe no one's ever heard the post show. There is a chapter marker for it, but maybe some people don't use chapters either, which is like, to me, that's like listening to a podcast blind.

You could do that. Uh, I guess you could. Huh. Funny world. Um, Nintendo R and D four. Zero skips. Zero plays. Two essential games. R and D four. Two games are. I can't think of it off the top of my head. Uh, they're the two biggest, best games on the NES. Legend of Zelda. Yes.

And Super Mario brothers. Isn't that insane? Yeah. R and D four just being like, yeah. Yeah. Now I looked at the rest of their, uh, like lineup and they have, they, they pretty much are going to continue to clean it up. Wow. Uh, with essential games. As far as I'm concerned, there is the debate of the legend of Zelda two, the adventures of Link because some people don't think that game is all that great. So that'll be the one that we'll see if we break their essential, uh, score. So would you say that like, if, if we didn't know any better, we could imagine that maybe they're on performance and ham enhancing drugs. Yeah. If we didn't know if you, if you directly correlate steroids and developer programming, sure.

Um, I think that what they do is they drink like Red Bull and take speed, right? Yeah. What developers do. Totally. Yeah. We'll just ask Miyamoto next time we go for an interview. Uh, Sean, since you're so wise about baseball, would you like to give me an overview of the sport itself?

Well, I mean, it, it's the same as our, our second episode ever. If you haven't listened to it, don't, it sounds terrible. Uh, but no, you know what? Just do it. Just, just listen to it. Um, but no, you know, you got, you got sticks, you got, you got bases, you got a ball, you got to hit. And when you hit it, you got to run into the bases until you get points. It's simple, Mike. I agree with that, that assessment of the game.

Uh, the, the game of baseball. Did you mention a bat at all though? He said stick. It's a stick ball. Stick ball. Yeah. But the stick ball is like only played in Brooklyn. It's American pastime. Yeah. Okay, good. I'm sure everybody who's listening knows what baseball is. Probably. You know, uh, you know, in 1994, they were like surveillancing us through satellites in the sky and stuff like that. And baseball was yeah, very, yeah. Universal Simpsons episode.

Uh huh. Um, and also, uh, very recently baseball has been in like a, a weird thing with the Houston Astros being like accused of cheating through a season. And I think that's incredible. Like. I thought it was just a Patriots thing. Well, also like just for what it's worth, you know, the major, major league baseball is not without problems. It was, it used to be like the number one sport in America and was considered like the

defining thing, but they, they just never figured out a way to make it more exciting. And the NFL, like as soon as like TV became a thing, figured out like, Oh, we could definitely make this seem sexy. Whereas like, there's no way to watch a guy like stand at a plate and observe pitches for waiting for the one that he wants. Sexy. You know, like in football, you have to make a call. You have to, you have to play very active in hockey.

You skate for 20 minutes. It's really basketball. That's overtaking it though. So, well, yes, that's true. Um, I guess I had more meant to say that like at this point in time, major league baseball in 1988 is the shit. Yeah. And you have, uh, a lot of like superstars or, you know, the superstars of even like the last decade or even starting here. Yeah. So, so there's a lot to be hyped about for this game. But I think nowadays, um, if the show MLB, the show, which is a now only on PS4, but is coming to all systems. Yeah. Uh, if that game didn't exist, there would probably be very little hype for baseball games

comparatively. Yeah. I know that the other, uh, I know that like EA just kind of dropped out and, um, to the 2k used to make a game. 2k used to make one too. And they both just kind of said like, man, it's not worth it. Yeah. MLB the show. Is that the only one? I thought that was just MLB. I thought of, I thought MLB the show was something different than like MLB. They're okay. So that, that isn't entirely true. We've just sort of glossed over the, yeah, the MLB has actually started to fund the people that are like rebooting RBI.

Right. Okay. But that isn't quite at the same level. Gotcha. Right. And then there's also like fun spinoffs too of like, it's not, it's baseball, but without all the messy franchising because these people want way too much money. Exactly. Yeah. But speaking of franchising, this is the first time that we have actual like teams to select from. Yeah. And you even get to see like, there are true colors of those team uniforms for all 30 teams. 26 back then. What's that? It was 26. Oh, 26. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

There was like a, a couple of expansions. There was a 96 expansion for sure. And I think a 93 expansion as well. Uh, also probably weren't in. I think, I think you're right. Um, one other note. I mean, you could have played as some of, some of the teams in the original baseball. Oh, cause it was, but it was just the N Y and yeah. It was just sort of like, uh, uh, like sort of nudging you that these were the teams.

Yeah. It's not quite. Right. And it was implied. A bigger thing about this one too, is that if you, if you want to look into it, even though they don't give the names of the players, when you make your lineups and stuff, if you look at the stats for the year prior, they are very close. Some of them are a little off. I thought that was pretty interesting that they're, that the stats were based on real characters because they had, they had the right to use the teams, but not the right to use the players. It probably didn't have like, is there an MLB PA?

Oh, there is an MLB PA and, uh, yeah, I think it might've even just come down to the idea of like saving space. No, I was reading that it was actually like a, I could be wrong. I could be wrong whenever I was reading it, but I was just reading that was actually like a permissions thing. Like they weren't allowed to use the players names.

And that makes sense. Cause it's totally possible to get the names of the teams without having to get the names of the players. I mean, they're separate organizations without getting off topic too much. That's the reason that most of the, uh, um, college football games had every team, but they had zero names. It was just numbers and they sort of like looked like the archetype of the player. Right. Uh, but I thought it was cool to see that and to also get all those stats. Uh, we'll obviously get into the gameplay, but, uh, that was something that just grabbed me right away is that like, we haven't seen this before.

Um, whether, you know, we played almost every type of sport now. I can't think of which ones were missing. Uh, cricket. Yeah, that's true. We didn't get a cricket game yet. Good, good contribution, Sean. Uh, also. There's a cricket game now, Mike. Yep. Uh, no, I just think like, you know, for what it's worth, I'm a big baseball fan. What about you guys? Uh, I grew up in a big baseball house. I played it when I was younger and I was, I was a fan, but not like, not a big fan. I, I don't really follow the MLB or anything anymore. And your team is like Yankees? Uh, my family's a big Red Sox fan. Red Sox fan. Yeah. So I couldn't have insulted you higher.

Yeah. I, um, I literally knew nothing about the sport until maybe high school. And then I, while I knew how the sport was played, I didn't care about it until college. And then you welcomed me into the Mets fandom. And now I am a casual viewer.

Um, and I, you know, I'll watch the world series and I'll, I'll watch the Mets when they're good, but that's been a while. Yeah. And, uh, as Sean mentioned, I am a New York Mets fan. This is a great time to be a New York Mets fan. Uh, in 1988, because even if you're going off the 87 team, we have most of the 86 team, which won the world series in there. So, uh, you know, it was, it was not hard to be like, okay, cool. I want Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, Daryl Strawberry. Like I want those guys in the lineup right away.

So let's just dive into it, right? Yeah. All right. Let's do it. What happens when you boot up the game, Sean? You get to pick if you want to play a one or two player game, then you move on to, uh, whether you would like to play a regular game, a world series game or an all-star game. And the differences, um, uh, amongst those were a little different than what I was expecting, but I guess it makes sense. A regular game is just a one-off game between two national league or two American league teams.

You can't go interleague in a regular game? You can go interleague. And that's the way it used to be for what it's worth. Now interleague happens all the time in baseball schedule, but you cannot select a national league team and an American league team. That's what the difference was. And that's because in the all-star game, that's when you get to assemble a national league team and select from any player from any team, which just could take forever, honestly. But if you're into that, go for it. And then also for the American league, you do the same thing. You see, I thought that there was going to be a presentational difference. I thought that after you won the game, or actually I thought it was going to be a series.

Right, right. I thought there would be some sort of fanfare or like a graphic of fireworks or something and it just ended. Yeah. I was hoping even the world series one would at least be like a best of seven one, you know? And instead it's just, no, now you can pick a national league team versus an American league team. And decide if it's going to be DH or not and all that. Right, right. Well, yeah. So the team selection process, what do we think about that?

I actually don't remember exactly what's happening. I remember being a little not intuitive. There was something weird about it, right? Well, the weirdest thing about it for me is that one wrong button and you don't go back one step. You go back to the main menu. I didn't even think I noticed that. And it gives you a really angry beep and just like, you did wrong.

Try again, dummy. Right. And it's like, there's got to be a reason for like, no, I actually, I didn't, I want to just go back to picking my team again. Like I don't, it's not even like all the players and stuff. It's like, I can't even go back to like any previous step. I have to start over. Yeah. So you better make those decisions beforehand.

Yeah. It also doesn't clearly explain that like, you're only allowed to select a certain amount of infielders, outfielders. Well, yeah. You're also, I mean, you're technically setting your defensive line up. You're talking about when you're setting the batting order here, right? Right. Well, that's the, yeah. Yeah. That's the beginning of the game, in my opinion.

No matter which mode you pick. You're selecting a team. That's why I was. Oh, okay. I got you. Well, you can't, it's not like you can have five infielders, so. No, no, it's true. But they also don't specify like, oh, this guy plays shortstop. Yeah. This guy plays, you know what I mean? It's almost like when you're first picking, you want to just be like, well, shit, I'm just going to pick the guys with the best batting averages.

Yeah. Exactly. But then you realize like, oh, you need to add a catcher. You need to add an outfielder. And they're on separate screens, which is fine. Yeah. Helps sort everything out.

But do you think this was maybe just too much information overall for a game that's this simple? I think, yeah. I was going to say, I think in general, it's really cool that you have the option. It gives you that immersion and it lets you feel like, oh, this is like my career mode, even though you're only playing one game and you're picking and whatever. But yeah, I do think it's like, like you said, it's so simple. I'm curious as to like what difference it really makes.

And I don't know if I need it in this, to be honest. I think in like, if we were one step, one level higher of like, maybe if we're on the Super Nintendo, we had a little more, it felt a little more real or maybe even like the N64 or something, then I'd be like, okay, I want a little more control here. I just want to like play an arcade game of baseball.

Yeah. I think that something that we'll see and we have seen throughout the evolution of sports games is just that they're all grasping for authenticity. And like, what else can I add to this game to make it more authentic? And this is kind of the first step. You've got the real teams. You've got the real players and their stats. Yeah. You don't, you can't play a season. Yeah. You can't play a series.

Yeah. There really isn't any difference in what they look like, but it's a step. And I think that in the history of sports games, it's an important step. And let's not forget that. Like that's the selling point on the back of the box. Like Sean's definitely right here because every single thing in bold on the back of the box is about like you basically being the manager. Like forget about, you know, like even playing the game. The whole idea is that like you're in control of your favorite team, which is an important selling point. In double dribble, you're in control of two random basketball players that you have no affinity for. I think you got the full, don't you have the full team?

In double dribble? Yeah. I thought it was, I was picturing like NBA Jam for a second. Yeah. Anyway. Is it four on four or what is it? I think it's five on five. Okay. Wow. Even in double dribble. Yeah. That's pretty cool. All right. Well, I like NBA Jam for what it's worth. I love NBA Jam. It's not a knock on only having two players, but again, NBA Jam has the whole like licenses thing going on. So that helps.

So you pick all your, you pick your team and then the computer like blazingly fast picks its team. I don't know why I need to show you. I can just show me the screen. Right. Afterwards, like give me the line of card. I'll be fine. And then you're like greeted with the stadium and stuff like that. And I don't know about you guys, but this was, this was just not that great of a presentation for the stadium. It's like a billion flies have just shown up to the stadium. They're like blinking lights. There's no like little people or anything like that. There's blinking lights and there's just so much like chatter.

And then one guy who's like whistling just over and over and over again. And it's like, I think on the baseball episode, we complained about how quiet it was, but I'm thinking now that I would rather that than like this. Yeah. This like.

It's another, it's another attempt at, at emulating that atmosphere. And again, they don't have the tools for it. It's funny though, because they kind of brag about it in the manual. I don't know if you guys read this, but like in the objective of the game at the end of this paragraph where I was explaining everything, it says, even hear the roar of the crowd as you hit a home run. That roar of the crowd is literally just static. Like it is actually really annoying. And I just thought it was funny that they like kind of like bragging about a little bit. And it's just like the most generic, like.

I may have been impressed. Who knows? Maybe you were. Yeah. I think you were. But the first thing you might do, you know, you're either batting or pitching, but I think we could talk about batting first. The most noticeable changes to me, just going from baseball to here is that you now have the ability to move around in the, you can move from like left to right. In the batter's box. You could do that in baseball.

Could you? Yeah. But I think. You can adjust like where you are attempting to hit it. I think my problem. Yeah. My problem with the baseball one was that if the ball like landed in your zone where you moved too far in, it just went right through you. Which just didn't, it didn't help with the feeling of it. That's part of why it was haunted. Yes.

And in this one, you can also bunt or fake bunt. I do. I don't know if the computer ever like pitched differently because it thought I was bunting, but I imagine that it could work if I faked a bunt and then went around for a full swing. Also, I should mention too, when you move in the batter's box, I think you can only move forward and back. That's true. Yeah. You can't move in all four directions.

And then if you have runners on base, even while you're batting, you are technically also the manager at the same time and you're allowed to make calls for runners to steal. Yeah. Which is a really cool feature. Well, yeah. I think like, I don't know.

The AI. We're going to get into that. Yeah. It's this uncomfortableness of like, does it know exactly what I'm doing or like, is there an opportunity for mistakes and stuff like that? Right. So, let's keep talking about batting for the time being. How do you guys feel about hitting a ball and controlling that kind of, you know, against a pitcher? Sure. I thought it was, I thought it was good, but sometimes I felt like I was a little cheated. Maybe I was just bad at it, but there were a few times where I was like, well, wait a minute. I think I hit the ball there.

I thought it was way too easy. And this is coming from like my, my explanation of baseball one. I'm just going to keep saying baseball one. This is a completely different game. Yeah. Was that it, it made me rage quit. Like I couldn't complete a game and because I couldn't hit. And this game is so easy that I think I racked up like 50 hits in a game and I was leading like 30, 35 to 11 at one point. It was just way too easy. Yeah. I think the scores in general in this game just get out of control regardless of. For both teams. Regardless, computer or you.

There's just like home runs are very frequent. Yeah. And I would say that yes, the pitching is easy provided that they don't throw one of those like insane fastballs. Yeah. That was just like, well, I'm just never going to be prepared for that. And maybe that's more real than anything is how fast the fastballs are. There were a few that were kind of, that were slow and like right down the middle. And I just feel like I hit the ball.

But like it's not, you can control like the height of your swing. So like there's not, maybe my timing was slightly off, but like visually I hit the ball. But I didn't. So maybe my timing was off. Maybe one of the reasons that I did well enough is because there is such a discrepancy between how fast their fastball is and how slow the changeup is that they also just decided to let you swing multiple times.

So if you just like time the pitch, you can hit that fastball. And if it's not a fastball, you can just swing again. It's funny that they don't even count the first one as a strike against you. Like, okay, fine. You hit the ball. But that first one, that's a strike. That reminds me of like baseball bugs. Wait, so how does that even work? When does it count as a strike? Like when it crosses the plane?

When? Only when it's crossing the plane. Only when it's officially like out of these opportunity zone. You know, like once it's been caught by the catcher, which is the same thing as passing the zone. I think that this is actually the section though, batting specifically, that made me question why I built together a lineup in the first place. Because averages don't seem to matter.

Home runs counts barely matter. Anyone is possible of hitting the ball provided you make contact with the baseball. And it doesn't matter. It's not like they hit it better or they run faster. So like there was just a huge, I feel like forget about all those stats. Like I get that that helps me think about what player it was.

Forget about all those stats and just give me like out of a score of four, like their power, their contact, and their speed. And that would have been enough. I mean, it's entirely possible that every time you hit a single or what would have been a single, it was a worse player. But I didn't notice that specifically. I didn't either. I was looking for something like that. Yeah. And I had no problem whether my guy was hitting 270 or 320.

Yeah. You know, like neither one was an objectively better player than the other one. That's true. And the home run goes the same too. I had a guy who. Was your pitcher hitting home runs? Yeah. I don't know if my pitcher hit a home run. I don't remember. But like you had guys who had 34 home runs and guys who had three. Three. And the guy who had three also hit a home run in that game. It's not like. It's just not like. Not that it should be impossible for any player to hit a home run. Right. It's just like in the odds of my game, he just happens to hit a home run. And so does the other guy. Like it just seems easy. And speaking of home runs, when you hit a home run, they just keep running out there.

Yeah. You just sit and wait. And like. Yeah. They're like, no, I'm going to get it. Yeah. And I'm worried that they might. They might just. Yeah. They might like hop the fence.

So I thought that was funny that like if you hit a home run that they just keep running. Maybe they can't see. Because when you're in the field, sometimes you can't see where you're running because the camera doesn't let you see. So maybe they have the same problem. Yeah. Maybe they do have that problem. And then while we're on this whole subject of your at bats and stuff. Did you guys like find it frustrating to control like, okay, I hit a pretty good ball there,

but it's in play. And I think this could be a triple, but I'm having trouble communicating like move to the next bag. So, yeah, I did have trouble with that at first. First, I did get used to it. But then I just realized that it really doesn't matter if it's on the cusp or not, because you, they will not try and catch you.

Like they will, they will cut you off so that you can't hit second if it's a double or you can't hit third if it's a triple. But they will make no attempt to throw it back to the previous base and catch you in a hop-off. Yeah. I noticed that too. So, yeah, you just, as long as you know how to return. Yeah. Then you're fine.

But I just, it just like gets a little confusing sometimes. Like, wait, hold this. The button combinations are weird because you have to hit a directional button and A, if you're, if you're going forward and B, if you're returning or the opposite. But once you just know A, you know, A is to advance, B is to return.

And then just the directional buttons are the bases. And then like, once you get like, get your head around that, it's a little more intuitive, but it did take me a little while to get the. I also just found myself still like aggressively tapping like A and the direction at all times just, just to make sure it was going to register. Same. Yeah. I think you have to hit the first base, like whatever the, the first base you hit is, and then you can input for the next one. Got it. Okay. Yeah.

But. Yeah. I almost wish you could just like, or, or input things in advance, you know, like a manager would make that call right away anyway. But I understand that it's like, it's more of a, a programming parsing thing where it's like, Oh, but you can't go to third.

He's not at second yet. And that's the other thing, because it's even confusing the way I described it because the directional button is not the base you want to go to. It's the way you're on. That's the base that the runner you want to advance is on in case you have two runners on base. So like that gets a little confusing too. It sounds like to be like, all right, like run to second. And I'm hitting the second. I'm like, no, no, I got to hit first because he's on first. And I'm telling him to run to second. Who's on first? What's on second? Uh, very good.

And, um, no one tried stealing. I did not. I think I did just for the heck. I tried to steal too. And I did not work out. Yeah. I think it might be that AI issue that you guys were talking about, but. Well, it just also feels like. You can't get a lead.

Yeah. Exactly. You don't know when to steal. Yeah. It's not like they, um, they don't just eventually, like if they haven't thrown the ball yet, it's not like they're going to then choose to throw it to home anyway. You know, like they're, they know that the pickoff is happening. And I tried to pick off. I tried to pick off some people too. And like nothing changes. Have you never, um. Lead off or anything either. Yeah. Really. So. I, I found, I tried to pick off a lot, but going back to stealing, is it possible to

steal while they're pitching? Like, is that. No, no. Uh, you'd have to. It has to be like while before the pitch. It has to be before the pitch. Because then you're in control. Then you're in control of the batter at that point. Yeah. So yeah. Not, not that great. Uh, I think even just being able to lead off the bag would have, would have went away. Like, uh, I think they did solve this in the N64 version of Major League Baseball where you can, uh, yeah. Took that long? Yeah.

You can hit the, uh, C buttons on the NES in, in the direction of the base you want to go to. And if you just tap it once, you go a small lead off, medium, large, and then finally the fourth tap is like, I'm stealing. You know, like, they want you to commit to it. But you're like setting it to steal for the pitch so you don't have to hit a button during the pitch. Yeah. Exactly. But you could do it during the pitch too. Oh, gotcha. You can. Yeah. In the pitch, they won't even take a lead off. If you press the appropriate bag on the pitch, they'll immediately start taking off. But again, that's like 64-bit programming.

Not really 64-bit programming, but you get the idea. Yeah. There's only one other thing you can do, though, after you bat. And that's pitch. Uh, it becomes the second half of the inning or the next inning, depending on if you're the home or away team. And now you must pitch. Uh, pitching here, more intuitive and also the realistic side of the game, uh, for what it's worth in terms of like- Yeah. Adding realism to actual players.

Sure. Uh, and I say that because there's a staying power associated with the pitcher. Like a pitch count. Yeah. A pitch count. And also the number of fastballs you throw, which is like kind of ahead of its time to be thinking about stuff like that. Because only very recently, like in the late 2000s, did people start thinking about like,

uh, he's got a hundred pitches. He's not, he's going to be pulled out of the game soon. Like, you know, it's like it never was like that before. And starting pitchers would go for a very long time in games. And I think they maybe realized like, I could make more money if I lasted longer in my career. So I shouldn't be pitching for so long for these teams.

So pitching, how do we feel? I mean, I think it was fine. You had, you had, you had four pitches. What do you get? A fastball, a slow ball, a curve ball. I mean, I think you get two pitches and you can do whatever you want with them. I would say it's three pitches, right? It's like, it's three pitches, meaning that, uh, you, you can press to make it slow. You can press upwards to make it fast and you can hold in the, like just throw a regular to just throw it down the line. But then once you throw it, you're in control kind of of the curve. You can make it a curve ball if you wanted to. So I thought it was right. It was curveball in the manual too. It was just what I did the whole time. Right. It was curveball and left is screwball.

Well, I mean, I guess technically, but what it's really. Are you actually controlling the level? You were controlling the movement of the ball. I would just hold the button I wanted to throw and it would just curve ridiculously into. Like you can actually make it dance in the air.

And I didn't know that. I never even took my finger off. That's funny. I was able to get the computer to, to just like think it was going to be a strike, a ball. And then it actually is a strike. So what about like, but I was really bad at that too. What about like fastball? Yeah. Can you like. Just hold down. I'll, yeah, I'll explain it. Uh, it's funny because I, I know what you're talking about in the manual. They don't say it so clearly, but what they mean. I thought you were just selecting your pitch. Right. What they mean to say is that before you pitch, you can choose between up and down on the control pad or no button at all.

Once you pitch up and down mean nothing anymore. You can't slow the speed of the ball, but left and right now come into play for direction. So you can, you can bring it inside to, you know, close to the batter or you can pitch it away. If you are holding left or right while you're pitching, it will be an inside or an outside pitch. So there is some like pre, pre touch, I guess, but then there's that after touch. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that makes it a little, a little more complicated than I thought it was. I thought it was just very like, here are your four pitches. No. Yeah. You use these.

And you guys mentioned that you tried picking off players, but that never worked. Never worked. Nope. I feel like the picking off the way that, that it's described in the manual implies that you can pick people off from the base they're currently on. Yeah. But I think it's only ever meant to be used for if they try to steal. I think that's only going to happen if you're playing a two player game. Right. Which I mean is good, right? You wouldn't not want that option, but it never comes into play with the AI. Yeah. So it's, it's not really worth it. And let's say you pitch a fastball down the middle and the computer makes contact with it. It goes in the air and suddenly a brand new concept is introduced to baseball games on the NES. Fielding.

What a concept. Joe, you want to take away fielding for us? Yeah. I want to start with my, my, the first thing that happened to me that, that kind of haunted me the rest of the game is that there's a pop fly in the outfield. You can't see your outfielder, but you, you see the ball, like it's where it's going.

So I just have to kind of blindly like kind of guess where the, where the outfielder is and you're still controlling, you're still controlling him. And then finally, when it comes into view and you realize you're like 40 miles west of where you're trying to be, you got to try and run the ball. You'll never make it. Uh, so that was like a very, a little bit of a frustrating thing. Um, I don't know what the solution is. I guess just. I mean, I guess a point like a cursor pointing towards you. Yeah. Something like that. I, yeah, I, I agree, uh, with Sean there that even, even a cursor pointing towards you or maybe, um, some kind of like variation of scope.

So this way you always see your player on the field. But I took it to mean like where that ball was currently hit, you were never going to catch it. You know what I mean? Like, it was like, this field is big and you just weren't there. And now you have to like chase after it. Yeah, you could have tracked it. If you were in real life in the outfield, you could have easily, like you, sometimes I'm

like a few, like a few feet away from it. Well, yeah, everything in this game feels like it's a line drive. You know, there's no pop-up where the ball is hanging for like 10 seconds. I thought there were a lot of those. There were a few of those. There's been quite a bit. I mean, not 10 seconds. Literally. I'm just saying like, yeah, that's how long they really are.

You know, like, they're up there for a while. But enough time to definitely think like any, any major league baseball outfielder would have been able to get under it. I feel like maybe I just sucked as a pitcher, but for the most part, I was either getting ground balls or I was getting line drives. I never felt like I got a true, like, ooooh.

I mean, I think even what you did there, that sound, was shorter than the amount of time. And yeah, it happens in my head as I'm playing, but. Got it. I mean, it even happens sometimes on fouls. It'll go right behind you and you can, you can get people out that way.

Yeah. Are we willing to admit though that fielding in general is just a little fidgety? Like. It's entirely fidgety. Yeah. Sometimes also like you are direct. I'm just still talking about pop-ups, but you are directly under the ball. And it just kind of like goes through you a little bit and like lands. You weren't like perfectly there. It's like, there's no way to know. Right. We all seem to talk about after you recover said ball, the speed at which you're throwing. It's like the slowest the ball moves in the whole game. I don't know what the, what the logic is behind it, but like, let's say you're, it's an outfielder, specifically an AI outfielder.

That ball will be on fire coming into, coming into the base that they're trying to get you out at. But if it's a, if it's like from third to first or second to first, it's moving slower than anything can. Yeah. It's almost like it's taking like the same amount of distance or like different amounts of distance over the same amount of time. Yeah. Like no matter what. I'm not really sure why, because it made double plays almost impossible.

Yeah. And another thing about the AI, they're running AI is a little, they're a little too conservative because. Oh yeah. They don't take a chance. They don't take any chance. If you are 300 feet away and you pick up, you pick up a fly ball and somebody's at second or somebody's at third, they won't try and go home. Like if you're, if you're in control, you can do that. Right. But they just stand still. It's so weird. I also found that unless they are pretty well committed, if you throw the ball to second,

they stay at first. They never even, they, like, even if there was like a chance maybe, right? Because you can always head back. There was never like a, like, okay, I'm going to go for, oh, he threw it there. All right. I'm going back. It's like, they just wait and see how everything is going to be played out. And you know, that's, that's a fault of the game. Like there probably should have been at some difficulty sliders.

There's a few misses on the AI to make it feel realistic. What I did like about the fielding was that there is also an option to tag a player at the base as well by holding B instead of A. And that could have easily just went like miss, like you have to throw. But I appreciate that they thought about the infield with that in mind and had a whole second button dedicated to like figuring out ways to also tag out the, the runner. But there's also like a version of this game that I think could have existed where you couldn't get them out by just running in front of them. But you can do that too if you just make contact.

Yeah. Double plays, well, maybe impossible from like the outfield. They can happen if they're hit appropriately on the infield. So I like that. I like a lot about the fielding for the first time we're seeing it. You know, maybe I'm like treating it like the original baseball in the NES here. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, I guess it's still training reels for this kind of game. But I thought it was like, I thought it was, I thought it was better than, better than expected for a first go around. I'd say pitching for me was the best part because you're able to control the ball throughout the entirety of its pitch.

And batting just felt too easy. So I didn't really enjoy that. Uh, it's almost like you want to, you want to just get out at a certain point to help progress the game because it's going to be nine innings regardless. I felt that too a little bit. And, uh, what's up with the umpires just kind of like teleporting to the scene of the crime, uh, whenever like there's an out or something, uh, they just like show up and they make the call. But what a lot of people won't notice is, is that, uh, they will change the, their like number of hands in the air based on the call as well.

So if it's like safe, they do the two as if they were like crossing their hands. They don't do that. They just start to go wide. They're still the same amount of hands that they're going to be involved in that motion. And then if he's out, they just show the one hand. And I thought that that was like a nice touch, you know, we could use more of that in the game in general. Why not show some players sliding, even if there's not a button for it, right? Why not just occasionally a player slides to the base?

Yeah, it's true. I mean, again, yeah, just that presentation and authenticity sort of thing, especially for those pop-ups that you're talking about, right? Where like all of a sudden you're like, I'm standing under the ball, but it goes like kind of just behind me, right? Maybe that's a great opportunity for like a glove. Yeah. I got like an overly sized glove. Like a big old glove.

Given the cartoony nature of the game anyway, to just like show up. And then this way you have a better idea of like, oh, I'm in that target zone. I will say maybe this is something that just happens in two player games because there's more that there are more opportunities for fault. But I never saw an error, even though there's a box for it. And the back of the back of the back of the back of the instruction manual says that there are errors.

And I've definitely seen what should be errors by the AI, like just fielders running away with the ball or like running away from the ball. But it would never show up on the box score. I don't really know why. I just wanted to point that out. Yeah. I'm looking into it now and I can't find any evidence of what an error would be in this game. Like no one's going to drop a ball. Once it's been registered as in their possession, there's no chance for it to be like, no, actually this was the one in 96 that they dropped.

You know, this just doesn't happen. So I'm not sure, but I can understand like it's in every box score ever in baseball. So might as well include it here to not pretend like they don't exist. Yeah. It's not going to happen in this particular game. They do advertise it happening though. They have a what? Oh, they have a chance of happening. They do advertise it happening. Right. Gotcha.

Extra innings are possible as well. That's nice. I think in baseball it just ended. It just ended in a tie. Oh, that's right. Sam had that weird situation where he had this huge comeback and he couldn't wait to get the extras and it just ended. Yeah. He must have been playing. Not that I know anything about programming a game, but it just feels like just make more of it. Like it just makes it just let it keep going. Yeah. Is it that hard? He must have been playing in a version where like it was pre-1930s and they didn't have the lights for the night games out yet. Time to go home. So they had to just be like, yeah, we'll cancel this game.

And do you guys know about the MLB challenge for this game? No. It was like a thing. It was like a Captain Commando challenge? I guess. It's not as inventive. Captain Commando challenges were a little more fun. This one is basically the only way to win a game other than winning in like runs is to exhaust all of the computer's pitchers. And they just forfeit? It's the only way to complete the game without completing all nine innings. You get the computer to basically say mercy because what it proceeds to do is find an available pitcher.

It opens up the menu. It can't. It selects anything. And it's been and it gets told like that error sound of like, so this is not a pitcher or like select a pitcher, blah, blah, blah. And then it just does it again. And again, on loop until you shut off the game. Oh, man. I want to do that now. So you should try to do that. Hitting is easy enough. Yeah. It definitely would happen in a nine inning game if you hit enough home runs and stuff like that. Unfortunately, it's just like, it's a lot of commitment because there's like, I think, seven pitchers to go through. I was able to because I think that once like a pitcher is tired, it shows like a ball next to it or something when it goes to the select screen.

But I think there was a point where I had gone through like four or five pitchers in that in that 50 hit game. That's awesome. So I think maybe it's possible. Yeah. You brought the select screen. I realize we didn't talk about that. We were we were talking about how in Ikari Warriors 2, I really liked the UI of that. Yeah. Of that select screen.

This one, I wouldn't say I really like the UI, but you have to commend them for fun. Following through with the amount of available options to you. You can pitch hit. You can sub. You can put a closer in. All that shit. You can even sub position players, even though it doesn't matter at all. Right. Like now this guy is going to be playing right field. Right. Like it doesn't matter. But like you can do that. And I have to applaud them for including that option.

So yeah, I am. I'm amazed at how much this game wants you to think it delivers without delivering most of it. That's a good way of articulating. Because I would say I'm impressed with the amount of effort they put in and the things they thought to include. But that's all I'm impressed with. Yeah. I think we'll include this in the essential games that we're about to do. Yeah, we definitely are. Yeah. No, no. And then like, would you have been mad if as a baseball fan you got this game in 1988? Okay. All right. So let's do the essential games list.

Sean, start us off. And don't forget, it's a two part question this week. It's would you have been mad if you got this in 1988? And also, is this in the essential games list? Okay. So back to our first episodes, we started off with a couple sports games. And I sort of went into the philosophy of looking at these 20, 30 years later. And I think it's important to look at the evolution of these games and how they get a little bit more in depth in terms of their presentation, their level of simulation, their authenticity. And I think this is a step in the right direction. It definitely is not without its faults.

But yeah, just by virtue of being this iterative kind of game, it is not essential. But if I were a baseball fan in 1988, I would be impressed by what they showed up with. Because again, I would want to play as a team, even if it didn't mean anything. I would be impressed by the stats. I would be impressed by the relative level of minutiae that you can get into the game with pinch hitting and all that.

But yeah, I mean, I'd be impressed, but not right now. Got it. Joe? I wouldn't be disappointed in 1988 if as a baseball game I played this. I think it's good enough for 1988.

And also there's just something, just me personally, about something about a sports game in particular where you kind of see the way it all works. It's just interesting. It's like a little machine. The way, like, this is how this works. I don't know how every video game works, but particularly with sports games, you kind of see it all functioning in a different way. But overall, it's already hard for a sports game to get onto our essential games list. And I think even as a sports game, this didn't blow me away that much anyways. Like, honestly, after a while, I was like, okay, it's baseball. Like, it's trying to do some things. It's not really delivering on all of it.

I do not think this is an essential game. I particularly remember as a kid playing RBI baseball, and I, in my head, remember it being better. It might not be anything close, but I'm interested to see what that's like. Maybe just all baseball games on the NES were just, like, not as good as I thought they would have been. We're nine episodes away from RBI baseball. I have not played that since I was, like, eight years old. But that's it. Great. I think I said everything I needed to say here when I said that, like, I commend them for the effort, but it didn't follow through enough for it to be on the essential games list. So it's automatically off for that reason.

But I think if you owned this game when it came out in 1988, and some kid next door neighbor had, like, baseball on the NES because it was made by Nintendo and came in some package deal, and then it comes over to your house, you're, like, the shit right now. You know? Like, it's a very competent game for what it's worth compared to the other one that we played. So I think that's worth mentioning. Another thing that's worth mentioning that I think is surprising that I've withheld until this time is that this is an LJN game.

And LJN has so far released Gotcha the Sport, Jaws, The Karate Kid, and Town and Country Surf Design's Wood and Water Rage. They really like sports. I mean, they've got the Gotcha the Sport. Yep. They've got the surfing and skateboarding. Like, you know, shark hunting is kind of a sport. Karate. Right. Karate is a sport. And to be fair, I think that this one probably made them a ton of money because the license isn't easy to get either, but they probably sold, if I had to take a guess, in 1988 at least a million copies of this game.

Maybe. Yeah. That seems a little high for me. Well, the reason why I say at least a million, and this is, you know, me doing some research, is because... Because you know it's over a million. No, I know that the Intellivision version of MLB sold over a million. So if anything, who knows, maybe they sold even better, you know? Don't forget, like, Super Mario Brothers sold something like 45 million or 55 million. That's true. So anything can happen. I definitely think they made some money off of this. And, you know, we shit on LJN a lot. And it's worth recognizing when they do good.

So I'm Michael Esposito Film. Wow. I'm just going to try and get as far through this as possible. No. We should actually, like, wrap this up, right? Yeah, we should totally wrap this up. I'm down to be done. Good. I'm down to be done, too, because we have another baseball game happening, like, super quick. And then probably another one, like, not too far after that as well. But next week we have City Connection by Jaleco.

That sounds like a made-up word. Yeah. Well, City Connection or Jaleco? City Connection sounds like it's like a D. A reading sim or something. Jaleco on the air. We really bring those up a lot. Everybody's going to find out sooner or later. But Jaleco was a corporate brand name that was used by two previously connected video game developers and publishers based out of Japan. Okay. Cool. They made games forever. All the way up to the PlayStation 2. Wow. Congrats, Jaleco, for your longevity. Including Boulder's Gate Dark Alliance. That's really weird. Yep. So I just pulled that one out of my hat real fast.

Okay. That's all the time we have for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to 100 episodes of Nostalgia. We couldn't do this show without you guys. Please, the best thing that you could possibly do for us is tell somebody else about this show. Tell your friends. Yeah. We have friends and we've told them, but we've exhausted all of those friends. And I know that some of you I've never even met in real life. So you have friends to tell. And I know that much. So go tell them about this awesome show that you're listening to and be like, yeah, it's kind of, it's like a great show. And then at the end they like beg.

Like poor people or something like that. They just start like begging for like listens or something like that. And you know what? If you set up a Raspberry Pi that just plays us on loop, we're fine with that too. Yeah. I'm totally cool with that. Even if no one's in the room. The Raspberry Pi is listening.

Welcome to the post show. Today we are doing a really fun thing for the post show. I am going to list the title of one of the first hundred. Mike, this feels way too formal for a post show. Can you at least like, like mumble a little bit more or something? Okay. I hear you. We're going to just talk about some more games that we've already played.

You know, you guys might remember, you know, it's not going to be fun if I say like, what was pinball like? But Sean, tell us about pinball. You got so fancy when he asked you to be more casual. You can't see it, but he's doing a little like head bob thing that like, you know, it's like, well, why don't you tell me? Head's rocking back and forth. Pinball. I mean, I remember pinball. It's pinball. No. Well, but what do you remember visually? I remember blue.

There was a lot of blue. There were like green lines. And then there were two screens. And if you hit it into the bonus area, you play breakout. Remember that? No. When you get into the bonus area, that's with Mario and Peach. Yeah, but you play breakout. Yeah. Didn't you? No, it wasn't like breakout, was it? It was. Oh, I guess it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You loser. Well, it looks like the teacher has become the master. Whatever. The master has become the student or something.

Student has become the teacher. I don't know. I guess what I meant was it's not quite breakout because there's only three blocks. I thought you were talking about like a full game of breakout because, you know, we played breakout as well. That's true. It was called what? Breakout. No, it was called the.

See, this is the fun of the game. I was waiting for someone to finish my sentence. Wait, I know this. It was called. I know, I know. Bulletstorm. It had its own controller. Do you remember what the controller was called? I didn't remember the controller had a name. Oh, yeah, the controller had a name too. Ujirard. I know this.

Arkanoid. Yes, Arkanoid. And the controller was called the Vouse. I don't think they knew that at all. Because that was the name of the ship itself. Yes. Okay, good. All right, so let's see what else I can get you guys on. If I go too early, it's too easy. But maybe you could describe to me a game like Trojan.

I can do this one, I think. This is the one where you have like a police baton, correct? Is this the right one? That's my description of the game. Sure, go ahead. But you look like a police officer, right? Well, it's like a post-apocalyptic thing. Yeah, but you look like a cop. That's all I remember. I don't remember looking like a cop at all. No, you look like you're a revolutionary, like, rogue kind of person. No, you look like a cop. Okay, and then at the end of the level, there's Boss.

Yeah. Wait, Revolutionary Road? Yeah, it looked like... The Leonardo DiCaprio movie? No, no, I didn't mean it like that. I meant like the Revolutionary Road, like... What are you talking about? Like, you know, the war, the Revolutionary War, but like... But like the road? You're talking about Mad Max? What are you talking about? Yeah, it was actually like... That's actually a great analogy. It was like that. It was like the Revolutionary War in the future.

Were there dogs that attacked you a lot? No, it was... What am I thinking of? The dogs is like... That's Castlevania, right? No, no, no. I knew Castlevania. Don't you remember, though? Trojan has like those guys who are like in the scorpion suits, who then like... Or the armadillos. Oh, yeah. They were the armadillos, and they roll up in those balls and like attack from the corners. I'm gonna look and I swear there were dogs. I'm sure there were dogs, too. Why not? Okay, Sean, you can take on this one, then. Russian Attack. Russian Attack was a game that you were in a car, like a dune buggy sort of thing. No. That's Breakthrough.

All right. You're doing good. The Russian Attack is... Yeah, it's a side-scrolling, same kind of game as Trojan, except, you know, you're fighting Russians on a base. Yes. Yeah. That was good. I'll take that. We're doing good. I want to say that I'm looking at a video of Trojan, and I was thinking of absolutely nothing like what I'm looking at. This is not at all. This is about gum shoe. I don't even think I played Trojan now looking at it. It's like, you can't remember this at all. You probably weren't on that episode, but that's weird. That was the first episode of 1987. That is weird. Okay. One of you, please describe...

Wait. I'm sorry. Yeah? Now I'm looking at Russian Attack. I was thinking of Russian Attack. That's really weird. But like, he looks kind of like a police officer, right? That's funny. Well, to be fair, they came relatively close to each other. Trojan was episode one of season three, and Russian Attack was episode five. Oh, we're going to seasons now. Yeah, I do that on the podcast. Okay. Section Z.

That's the, you're in a little jet pack type thing, right? Yep. And it's A to shoot one direction, B to shoot in the other direction. Yep. Revolutionary. I kind of liked that. I liked that. I liked that mechanic of it. It wasn't a great game, though. It was neat. Yeah, it was okay. I just remember thinking that the mechanic of the A, B, being left and right made it much more like... Intuitive. Intuitive to play, exactly. Load Runner? That was a puzzle game. Kind of. No, I mean... Yeah, it was like you went up, you went up like ladders.

Oh, right. And you blew stuff up. Right. No. I'm thinking about it. You were collecting gold. Yes. But didn't you, you could, I'm sorry, not blow stuff up, you dug in the ground, right? Yes. Okay. And you beat the final boss, and then there's like more to do. You had to like go find more stuff. There was a boss? There's no boss in the run. What are you talking about? Yeah, there was.

Spelunker, you must be thinking of that. Like, yeah, Load Runner is like, Load Runner, but this was the one that like, it was... Oh, yeah. You were at the speed. Yeah. You were thinking of Russian Attack. Wait a minute. Did I ever play any of these games? You played Load Runner. You were thinking of Russian Attack. One thing that everyone at home should know is that we've all definitely played Load Runner because we recorded it twice.

We recorded it twice. Did they know that? Twice. No, they don't. Oh, okay. So this is really our 101st episode for us. Well, hold on. No, I don't. I don't subscribe to that theory because we also have a bunch of unreleased episodes. So there's that. The hidden, the secret levels. Just all our regular conversations that we don't record. Yeah, the lost levels. Lost levels, yeah. Yeah, when we reveal that, there's that whole mic without mics thing. What is that? I think one of them made the cut. Yeah, one of them did, I'm sure.

Tiger Heli? Definitely about a helicopter. Yeah, is that the one that you're kind of on an axis thing? You can turn very easily. No, no. What's that? That's the Raid of Bungeling Bay. Oh, yeah, that's right. I don't quite remember Tiger Heli, though. Tiger Heli, you know this. Is it a Zapper game? No. Oh, my God. You thought it was a Zapper game. Operation Wolf was the Zapper game. I know. You thought Tiger Heli was. No, you remember Tiger Heli because that's the game where you're in a helicopter defeating the bad guys while also blowing up houses. Yeah, like a towering that. That's right. You're blowing up a town. It's like nobody's harming you. You're the monster. Alpha Mission?

Give me a hint. Alpha Mission's a shmup. Oh, that's the one with the weird cursor select thing. Yes, for the power-ups. Yeah. Very good. I don't remember any games that we've ever played. Wow. They're all gone. One ear or the other. What about...

Now we're so close. Kid Nicky Radical Ninja. Kid Nicky... Oh, yes. That was... I barely remember that. I think we beat the game. Yeah. That had like the big-headed bosses and stuff. And you had your weapon would like fly out of your hand and stick in the wall. Oh, yeah. And you had to like jump up there. But it would magically jump. But you had a ladder, right? No, but you would... No, that's Rygar. No, that's a... No, the ladder... Well, you do have a ladder in Rygar. Oh, that's Dragon Ball.

Yeah. Yeah, Dragon Power. And also the ladder, I think you were thinking of Karnov. I was thinking of Karnov. Right. Karnov is this season. Oh, I was trying to remember the name of Karnov because I saw Karnov on the subway the other day. I swear. You just saw it. It was him. No, he was standing on the subway. It was just like that mascot. Wow. Okay. I dig it. Yep. Okay, what else do we have?

Star Force. It was very much like Alpha Mission. Yeah, that's true. Actually, you got away from Alpha Mission, didn't you? Did I give you guys a pass on that? No, you got that one. No, yeah, I got it. That was just like... Star Force was like Alpha Mission except... Is it Omega and like Phi Epsilon? Is it the one where everything was different from the Greek alphabet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty good at this. Yeah, you're pretty good at this. We even each other out, so we're pretty average at it together. Star Force was also the one that was just bare bones. Yeah. There was no power-ups or anything.

And Joe said that this could be one that would be like fun for people that are really into shmups because they've got to learn how to play shmups. Yeah, because it's pure. They just want to just play shmups. And somebody wrote in and said, yeah, I agree. Yeah, they agree. And I think you disagreed with me very strongly. I just think that just because it's the same, it's the generic game doesn't mean it's good, you know. I didn't say that.

We'll get back into this argument again here. But I just think it's just, it's literally just the shmup. Some people don't like the bells and whistles. Like peanut butter. It's just peanut butter. Yeah. Like I like to eat a spoonful of peanut butter every once in a while. I don't think this analogy like necessarily universally applies to like anything. Like everything is better with other things added on it. I mean, I just like peanut butter. All right. Last one.

City Connection. I know. We didn't play it yet. That's next week. Trick question. Next week. What do you think it's about? I think it's like, it's like Cities in Motion where you just, you make your own bus stops. The amount of references you've made to dating simulators and you chose not to suggest that City Connection. City in Motion is. You think City in Motion is a dating sim? No, I was saying that, no, I was saying that you should have. Oh, this is a dating sim? You should have. No, no, no. It's not a dating sim. But you should have went in on that, right? This is gross, Mike. We can't do this.

Like a City Connection. Children listen to this. I was going to say that it's going to be more of like a missed connection thing. Like your character met someone, but then it's, you know, before cell phones and they didn't find each other. Mike, I'm sorry. Couldn't find each other. Just explain. It's an arcade game.

The player controls Clarice in her Honda City hatchback. That has to be like mentioned. That has to, it's like in the overview. In her Honda City hatchback. And she must paint every section of a highway throughout 12 stages, each taking place in a famous city from across the world. That sounds surprisingly interesting. Until you realize that the highway that you're painting is just like lines like, you know, that stack up on each other. It's not like an actual like highway kind of thing. There are no cars? There's other cars that are, those are the obstacles. Oh, okay. They didn't put up any like barrier? No. Oh, that's dumb. Yeah. Dumb. All right. Good show, guys. Anything you want to say before we wrap up for the next 100 episodes? Hmm. No.

I'll get you on, I'll get back to, I'll get you on 200. Wait, what, what, what day is this episode airing? This is the first episode of 2020. Oh, okay. Go Bills beat the Texans? All right. I like the odds. I like the question. Yeah. At the end. If it's the Texans, I like those odds. Yeah. Great.